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Viewing: Galaxy Collider

Galaxy Collider the interface is all rather simple and hopefully familar looking.

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To load a new simulation, first select "New…" from the "File" menu, and use the resulting Get File dialog to open the new simulation data. Notice that this file is any old text file - this is so that people can create their own startup data files and give them a run. If you want something to try, look in the Examples folder included with Galaxy Collider.

If you have run a simulation for a while and you want to save your present data to file, then Galaxy Collider has its own file format that it uses and stores this data. This uses the familar Save/Open operations as displayed in the "File" menu.

If you select the "Preferences…" menu item, the dialog for the preferences will appear. There are two fields that you can fill and both require positive integer values. The first is the number of timesteps that are calculated between displayed frames; while the second is the number of stars that appear in each galaxy. Be careful with this last field, as the more stars that you include the harder your cpu has to work to calculate - try small and slowly work your way up to larger and larger galaxy sizes until you reach a level that you feel comfortable with. If you happen to get yourself in knots trying to decide which values to give these fields, try clicking on the "Factory Settings" button which will fill the fields in for you.

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To get the fun stuff happening once you have loaded some data up is to use the "Simulation" menu.

To get Galaxy Collider to start doing a single set of calculations, you need to select the "Run" menu item. Notice that when you select it that the "Pause" menu item becomes disabled and the check mark appears next to the "Run" menu item - when the required calculations are done, then the "Pause" menu item will become enabled and the check mark will return to alongside it.